Capacity Building Program on Indigenous Peoples, Human Rights and Advocacy (Australia, 20th-29th June 2005)

The Diplomacy Training Program’s Indigenous Peoples, Human Rights and Advocacy Course was conducted in Batchelor, NT from June 20-29, 2005. The program was held at the invitation of Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education (BIITE) and in partnership with the Northern Land Council.

The course was held at the invitation of two DTP alumni, Alma Mir and Zane Hughes. The Diplomacy Training Program would like to express its appreciation to both of them, to Batchelor Institute and its staff, and to the traditional owners of the land, who provided a warm welcome to all the participants and to the trainers.

There were 28 participants drawn from Fiji, Vanuatu, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Bangladesh and from most parts of Australia, including the Torres Strait Islands. The participants were selected from over 110 applications. Overall, they brought together an inspiring range of experiences from their work for and with Indigenous Peoples across the region.

The first hand accounts about the struggles of Indigenous Peoples across the region provided all involved with rare insights into our region. While the challenges faced in every country and by different communities are very diverse there are also issues in common: the struggle for recognition of identity and to maintain and assert traditional knowledge and culture; relationships to the land and the importance of communal land ownership; struggles to gain economic and social benefit from development and resource extraction from their land; environmental destruction and cultural survival.

The Diplomacy Training Program (DTP) and partners are calling for applications for a Pacific regional capacity building program for civil society on Business, Human Rights and the SDGs in the Pacific to be held in Fiji from April 30 – May 5, 2018.

Trainers on the program will include Professor Surya Deva, member of the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights as well as other leading experts and practitioners.

The Diplomacy Training Program (DTP) and JOAS are calling for applications for a regional capacity building program on Indigenous Peoples, Human Rights and Partnerships for Sustainable Development to be held in Malaysia in April 04-13, 2018.